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MAKING THE CASE FOR ELECTRIFYING THE GREAT WESTERN LINE


In their election manifesto, the Conservatives pledged to begin work immediately to create a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds as a first step towards creating a national high speed rail network to join up major cities across England, Scotland and Wales.

The second stage would involve the delivery of two further new lines bringing the North East, Scotland and Wales into the high-speed rail network.

On Wednesday, we will find out whether this will actually happen. However, let me nail my colours to the mast immediately.

In my opinion, if the UK Government is to build a high speed rail link, then it should start with the Great Western line from London to the West of the country, including Wales.

Why should this be the case? Is this blind patriotism on my behalf? Well, only in one eye.

As the Conservative Bow Group suggested earlier this year, Brunel’s superbly engineered Great Western line could and should take priority over the high speed line to Birmingham and the North, especially as some have suggested that it seems to have been designed all those years ago with a 21st century ultra speed railway in mind.

Yes, at a time of government cuts, it could be the cheapest option for 'piloting' the high speed railway network.

The Bow Group suggests that:

"such a strategic reassessment could deliver a valuable early win of a high speed line to Bristol, Wales and the West, possibly even in advance of a high speed line to Birmingham and the North. This would make use of Brunel‟s superbly engineered Great Western railway which, “still remains one of the world‟s most extraordinary engineering achievements; almost dead flat for 82 miles from Paddington to Wootton Bassett, with long straight alignments linked by curves of huge radius, it seems to have been designed as a twenty first century ultra high speed railway. Electrified and resignalled, it would be potentially capable of operating at over 200 miles an hour."

Certainly the cost would be far less than the proposed northern route and would demonstrate the viability of upgrade and the effect it would have on the Welsh economy.  For example, the British Chambers of Commerce has estimated that approximately 70 per cent of travellers to and from Wales utilise English airports, particularly Heathrow. It has suggested that

"high speed rail to Cardiff has the potential to reduce journey times from London to the Welsh capital to 70 minutes. Currently, First Great Western services can only travel at 125mph between London and Bristol Parkway, while the speeds that can be attained in South Wales are much lower. Between the Severn Tunnel and Newport the maximum line speed is 90mph, whereas between Cardiff and Swansea the maximum speed on the majority of the line is 75mph. High speed rail offers the potential to dramatically reduce these times. With a direct connection to Heathrow, the journey time between Heathrow and Swansea can be halved from three hours to just over an hour and a half. Such drastic reductions will allow Wales, and the West of England, to promote themselves to international business as a location offering fast connections to Europe’s main hub airport and, with a link the continent too. Faster commuter travel will also significantly widen the labour pool for businesses on both sides of the border."

Indeed, the absence of a direct train between South Wales and Heathrow adds significantly to journey time and to Wales’ ability and that of its businesses to connect to the rest the world, limiting productivity. Given the years of underinvestment into the rail network in Wales, isn’t it time for Welsh politicians from all parties to work alongside colleagues in the South West of England to lobby the government to make the Great Western line a priority for electrification?

Indeed, you have to wonder why no-one has yet used the Bow Group report as the spur to ensure that the Great Western line becomes first in line for the high speed railway investment proposed by the the coalition government.

p.s. Syniadau has also blogged on the Bow Group document, although as far as I know, its conclusions have yet to be picked up by the BBC in Wales.

Comments

Business4Wales said…
We thoroughly endorse this view. While they're at it they can build a tunnel under the Brecon Beacons, under the Cambria Mountains and then under Snowdonia to create a North South high speed link - if the Swiss can do it under the Alps there doesn't seem to be any reason why we can't either.
It'll take about 15 years and £20billion but that would be cheaper than the proposed Severn barrage. You also wouldn't get complaints from English second cottage absentee owners 'spoiling their view' and asking for outrageous compensation.
All that mining expertise we have in Wales could be put to good use.
We could even dispense with Air Ieuan.
Avatar said…
Since the M4 is congested, and the cost of upgrading is expensive in financial terms but environmentally as well, the argument for improving the Great Western railway line is as you say strong.

I am less convinced about Heathrow though, and the argument that it should be the hub for the majority of international flights. Maybe we should look at how we can develop Cardiff Airport, making it more viable by providing more international destinations.
Mr Logical Blue said…
Having visited Terminal 5 and the 'Heathrow Express' again this week I can say nothing but good about a direct rail link to H'row - it's disgusting that there isn't one already.
Owen said…
Electrification of the Great Western is a transport "must" as far as I'm concerned. The Great Western (not just South Wales but SW England too) has always seemed a poor relation compared to the "bigger brother" West and East Coast mainlines. There's always seemed to be a chronic underinvestment along this corridor, though that could be in part to it's excellent engineering as you've said Prof.

A direct transport link with Heathrow, either in the form of a west-facing branch from the existing Heathrow express line or as a "Heathrow Hub" would also be welcome, though as Avatar has alluded to, that says a lot about Cardiff Airport currently.

Electrification wouldn't make the Great Western a high-speed line by definition though. We'd get better trains, less wear and tear etc. but many of the estimates I've seen have said a journey from Swansea to London would only be 15 minutes faster than it is currently.

A truely "high speed" line as demonstrated between the Chunnel and St Pancras would need a new build to a similar spec for most of the route and almost certainly across South Wales. Kerching!
Disgusted said…
"We therefore have to develop a strong case for the HS3 to South Wales by 2020 and we have to begin work now."

That was Prof Stuart Cole back in 2008.

Does anyone know what case WAG has presented before the UK Government apart from we need a high speed rail? Did anyone make the case on the cost issue as suggested by the prof here? If the same amount of effort went into this as went into getting Olympics contracts for Wales, I guess the answer is no.
Anonymous said…
interesting! Disgusted seems to blame WAG for this even though the blame lies solely on the shoulders of the UK Government.
MH said…
Thanks for mentioning Syniadau, Dylan. In fact it was my friend Penddu who first picked up the Bow Group report in this post. But I do agree with what he had to say, and added some more myself.

I fully agree that the Great Western Line is an unusually good railway, and just as it was therefore suitable as for the HST at 125mph in the seventies, it could also be upgraded again now. To get a big increase in speed potential will require electrification, complete re-signalling and also some serious thought about what to do with the other, slower trains that use the same line. Electrification is perhaps the easiest part of that equation and in that sense it can be the first of a set of incremental upgrades, irrespective of whether it is used for trains that travel at 225kph/140mph (which is what could be done with existing signalling) or later used for what we now call "high speed" rail at 300kph or so.

However, I thought the much more important part of the Bow Group's proposal was its proposal to route the HS2 line from London to Birmingham (and then onwards) via Heathrow. For me this was the thing that really, really mattered. Arup are just about the best in the business, and their solution was just so much better thought-through than the alternatives.

So when Labour came up with a route consultation for HS2 that did not go via Heathrow, I was very disappointed. I explained the reasons in this post. And without wanting to sound flippant—because I'm obviously not a Tory—the thought that the Tories would reject Labour's route and go for the route via Heathrow was one of the few silver linings in the otherwise dark clouds of a Tory government in Westminster.

However, when Philip Hammond made his announcement that HS2 would go ahead, all the reports I could find suggested that he was going to go with the Labour route rather than the route via Heathrow. So as a plea to Dylan (because no one in the ConDem government is going to listen to me) I would urge you to try and use whatever influence you have to make sure that the line goes through Heathrow.

Without wanting to repeat what I said in more detail in the second link, the advantages are two-fold:

- for the UK, it reduces the attractiveness of internal air travel. We have to use air travel for long routes, but we have to minimize it for short routes.

- for Wales, it means a much more direct connexion to Heathrow (we wont get the Heathrow Hub unless HS2 goes through it) plus an opportunity for "cross the platform" interchange with trains going to Paris and Brussels (and soon Cologne and Frankfurt) without having to make the journey across London from Paddington to St Pancras.
Anonymous said…
Basicaly can't see it happening, there's a big hole between Aberystwyth and ...er... the rest of Wales the kind of knows a couple of counties out of the picture. Even the direct service to London was stopped, and no one did anything about it.

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